Wednesday, June 06, 2012

A wondeful visit + AM Solar

Monday, June 4th

A parting picture of the Whitaker Creek campground. A beautiful place, indeed.

We left the Whitaker Creek campground mid-morning and drove to Eugene to visit with our friends Russ, Donna, Rusty and Poppy. Donna is a super cook. For lunch she made teriyaki chicken and mixed veggies on a stick accompanied with a fresh salad and a selection of berries for desert. We haven't eaten that well for quite some time. Tuesday breakfast was yet another treat.
Poppy Dog had a habit I've never seen before. She would just get into the bathtub and lay there. So, when you were using the bathroom, you had some nice dog company. When I got my camera she got out of the tub. Embarrassed perhaps? Perhaps Donna can post a picture of Poppy Dog in the tub.

On Tuesday, Russ and I drove to the municipal sewer treatment plant where they have a free dump station. To top it all off, Russ and Donna gave us a great book called Common Plants of the InlandPacific Northwest and told us about some of their favorite OR camping areas. Now, with their book in hand, when we see a new plant, we'll be able to figure out what we're looking at. Maybe. We have two very comprehensive bird books but we're still frequently perplexed. It always seems that the bird we're looking at is the female, juvenile, in Autumn plumage and that's the one picture the books are lacking.
The three of us had a very enjoyable visit.

Camping in a friends front yard.

After topping off with water, we headed out to run our errands and go to AM Solar where we spent the night. Steve(Lazy Bones) is here. He and his dog Jiggs, are on the way to Alaska and he stopped at AM Solar to add a third panel to his array. We had met Steve at "Q" this year. Steve's daughter is flying into Anchorage in July and they're going exploring together. This is Steve's second trip to AK.
They started working on the rig about 8:45am and didn't finish up until about 6:30pm. They have a wonderful customer lounge but still, that's a lot of just hanging around. Once all was said and done, we wound up with one more panel for a total of 300 watts, 4 AGM batteries (880 amp hours) and a Tri-Metric battery monitor. We did meet a nice couple who are full-timers, Bob and Kim Dance,who are also getting some work done, so that helped pass the time.

Tomorrow we head east to the mountains.
Greg and Deb Holder are the owners of AM Solar. AM stands for Alternate Means, as in different options. Deb is very knowledgeable about OR campgrounds, boondocking, and such, and gave us some good camping ideas.

4 comments:

We were happy to meet you and Carol and Gopher. Thanks for all the good information you shared with us. Sorry the work took up your entire day over there, but at least you met some more RV'ers. We enjoyed the sunshine, which was a welcome change. I forgot to tell you about the construction on Hwy 58 at the Salt Creek Tunnel. If you go to Waldo, I think that's the only way you can get there from here, just be aware of possible delays. We'll look forward to following your journey, with your more "powerful" rig!!

Thank you for the compliment Ed, although I have never thought of myself as a good cook!! Glad you and Carol and Gopher enjoyed your visit - we sure enjoyed having you. I will try and get a picture of Poppy the Bathtub Dog!!